Day 2 of 7, a study on rest that isn't retirement.
I had an empty calendar within a week of retiring and discovered, a little embarrassed, that an empty calendar isn't rest by itself. I filled it right back up with a different kind of busy, restless the whole time, just restless about different things than deadlines.
"There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his."
Hebrews 4:9-10
Stopping work is a schedule change. Resting from your works, in the way this verse means it, is a heart change, the same kind God modeled when he rested after creation, not because he was worn out but because the work was actually finished and good and could be trusted to hold. My retirement stopped the paycheck. It hasn't automatically stopped the striving underneath it, the part of me still trying to prove something with a full calendar.
Today's Question
Where are you still striving even though the schedule that used to require it is gone?
A Short Prayer
Lord, an empty calendar isn't the rest I actually need. Teach me to rest from the striving underneath it, the way you rested when the work was good. Amen.
God bless,
Paul